An Infinitely Deep Swamp

Yesterday I finished listening to the final episode of Rachel Maddow's podcast, "Bagman," which is the mostly untold details of Spiro Agnew's crash & burn.  Agnew was, even more than Nixon, the index case of the modern Republican party.  He did not mention the charges against him publicly.  No.  Agnew played to the rubes and racists in his party.  Disdain for the press, hatred of liberals, and unrepentant racism.  The Republican base remained attack dog loyal.  

I remember watching a televised get together of VP candidate Agnew and a group of college age or early-20's African-Americans.  The event was presented as the Republican's olive branch to the black community following some of Agnew's racist remarks.  I was stunned.  Agnew would not -- perhaps could not -- understand anything the black people said.  Not a word penetrated.  He blathered over them and around them.  Not even whitesplaining as much as not even being in the same room or possessing the same vocabulary.  Now, I understand that Agnew was playing to his base.  He was verifying his racist bonafides to them and pumping up Nixon's southern strategy.  

He started out in politics taking bribes and kickbacks when Baltimore County Executive, increased the sleaze when Governor of MD, and then increased again as Vice President.  The guy was accepting envelopes filled with $100 bills in his White House office.  Although Doc Maddow repeats herself frequently in the podcast as she does on her TV show, she lets the listener draw the connections between then and now.  

The Republicans pushed their VP out to avoid the highly likely double play of both Nixon and Agnew impeached and removed from office for their respective crimes.  Then, as will happen in less than two weeks, a Democrat was speaker of the house.  But, before Nixon threw Agnew under the bus, they conspired to obstruct justice by trying to coerce a Maryland Senator to get his younger brother, the US attorney who was running the Agnew investigation, to shutter the investigation.  Nixon and Agnew's conspiracy can be heard on one of the White House tapes.  (Hugs and kisses to you, Alexander Butterfield.)  Melvin Laird was Nixon's first choice for emissary to the Maryland Senator.  When that didn't work -- not clear why -- he found another flunky: George Herbert Walker Bush.  That good soldier was then head of the Republican National Committee. 

"Bagman" gives me hope.  The good guys won 45 years ago.  I was a junior in college, sitting in a computer programming course lecture.  My memory says about 50 students in an old-fashioned lecture room with two or three sets of chalkboards that could be raised and lowered like window blinds.  The room sloped upward from front to back.  Chairs were bolted to the floor in neat, slightly curved rows, and a small writing surface would fold up onto the right side armrest like the tray tables on the seats at airplane bulkheads.  A teaching assistant strode down from the back of the lecture hall, taking the shallow steps two at a time, until reaching one of the blackboards where he wrote, "Spiggy is out!"